Themselves - CrownsDown LP

From the Anticon website: ''Seven months after the release of theFREEhoudini - the celebrated mixtape that announced Themselves' return - Doseone and Jel drop CrownsDown, a careful and vicious exhibition of mastered rap tactics and sampling ethics. Themselves' third album proper has been gestating in the gut of this seminal group for some time. It's both a return to form and a honing of what's come before (Subtle, cLOUDDEAD, Deep Puddle Dynamics) - both the opus that these lionhearted two were always meant to make, and the album that their hip-hop-obsessed teen aged selves always hoped to hear. On CrownsDown, Themselves hold back nothing, welding brute skill to a concrete set of tracks that represents an essential ten commandments of rap. In preparation, Doseone and Jel revisited their beloved hip-hop collections (e.g. Gang Starr, Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, Saafir) and whittled down the recurring themes that made their favorite records so sturdy. Each song on CrownsDown represents one of these archetypes